Management Team

Applications for the Management Team have now closed. We will be in touch soon with the outcome of your application.

The Management Team helps us to produce the Festival. Working as part of the Workshop, Front of House or Box Office team, you’ll assist visiting artists in their morning workshops, liaise with the shows produced by 16 to 25 year olds that are selected to come to the Festival, look after audiences and run our evening events, such as the legendary quiz, the cabaret and parties (Bowie Night in 2016 pictured above).

This year, as part of your training, you’ll attend workshops with leading producers and theatre managers on topics like how to get your first job in the arts, how to fundraise and producing masterclasses. As a member of the team, whenever you’re not on shift, you’ll be able to attend other workshops (which range from voice classes with the RSC to making solo political shows with artists like Chris Thorpe and Lucy Ellinson), see the shows, attend the daily discussions etc.

Being on the Management Team gives you loads of demonstrable experience in a professional theatre and events management setting, which is great for the CV, and, more importantly, it’s loads of fun. No experience is necessary, just enthusiasm and a can do attitude!

Scroll down to read more about a day in the life of the Management Team...

What does it cost?

We have fundraised succesfully to bring the cost of being on the Management Team right down, compared to previous years. Sadly, we can't afford to make it free; if you're selected to join the Management Team we will ask you to contribute an amount towards your presence at the Festival.

This amount is around a third of what it costs to host each Management Team member at the Festival. Another third is paid for by money we raised from the Arts Patron's Trust, and the final third is subsidised directly by NSDF. There are no hidden costs on top of this and we do everything in our power to ensure that you get value for money out of your experience at the Festival. So:

If you aren't resident in Leicester, we ask you to pay £100

This is less than a third of what it costs to host a Management Team Member in Leicester for the nine day period. We will provide lunch and dinner from Friday 23rd to Friday 30th March. We'll accommodate you in a city centre hotel, in a twin bed room from Thursday 22nd to Saturday 31st March.

If you are resident in Leicester, we ask you to pay £24

This is a third of what it will cost us to host you at the Festival. We will provide lunch and dinner from Friday 23rd to Friday 30th March. We won't provide accommodation for you, as you already have a place to live in Leicester.

Bursaries

There is further funding available to cover the cost of attending the Festival for those in need. This is the result of a generous donation from the Arts Patrons' Trust. If you are selected for the Management Team and can't afford to pay the fee, you will be able to apply for this bursary. More information will be sent after we've hired the team.

We aim to be completely transparent about costs and funding. If you have any questions about any of this, please don't hesitate to email Joseph ([email protected]).

Our Management Team in Hull for NSDF 17.

day in life of management team

by Matilda Reith 2015

NSDF Management Team members can expect to enjoy the very best and broadest of the festival.

It is a fine art to balance friendly professionalism, razor-sharp banter and excellent time-keeping whilst navigating hilly Scarborough, battling the four pints you had the night before and trying to keep up with a high-brow conversation about the arts with people who are clearly much cooler and better-read than you.

However, in the words of LL Cool J “Z z z z z z z z zzzzzzz z zz z z z z z z z”. But also, “When adversity strikes, that’s when you have to be the most calm. Take a step back, stay strong, stay grounded and press on”. We may laugh, but a management team member would do well to remember these wise words in the middle of a busy day mid-festival, see example below:

08:00 Your alarm goes off and your hangover slams you behind your eyes, making showering almost impossible but even more essential. Your hoodie, which is by now stained with gin, toothpaste and ketchup is pulled on as you eat a hasty breakfast of regret and porridge before you’re out the door and onto your first shift.

10:00 You are stewarding a workshop, and the photocopies haven't arrived and Chris Haydon is late. But it’s okay because that’s the Workshop Coordinator’s problem. Weary fest-goers arrive, some too tired to remember their own name as you check them off the list, but by 10:05AM photocopies and Haydon are safely on lockdown and the workshop can begin.

12:00 You are starting to feel human again after a life-affirming talk about arts-funding on the bus down, just in time for the Discussion. By Thursday of the festival, the gloves are off and it is a lively debate about women in theatre, but at this point you are mostly thinking about lunch. Who will you try and sit with today? Maybe producer extraordinaire Donna Munday, or perhaps even the NSDF Holy Grail, Chris Thorpe. Maybe he’ll follow you on Twitter. A packet of crisps and ham sandwich later, you're off to your next shift, Front of House for a show at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.

16:00 You’re in tears, and you don’t really know if you understood what the show was about, but it was great. You didn’t have to turn down anyone on the door and you managed to nab a seat for yourself too. You make a mental note to talk to the cast in the bar tonight and maybe ask for the fit one’s number.

19:00 Dinnertime. You get there early to get a good pudding. It’s profiteroles. As you eat them, your belly full of warming food in Northern portions, you look around at the sweaty faces around you. Fellow Management Team members. Their hoodies are beacons of hope in the suburbs of Scarborough when you’re lost. You don’t know all of their names, but you do know they’re wonderful and you love them all. Even if your roommate does snore.

22:00 The grey hoodie is off. It’s time to show the festival just how fashionable you actually are. You make a beeline for the fittie from the show that made you cry, but you see there’s already an orderly queue. Whilst waiting to get served at the bar, you end up giggling with a stranger over the latest issue of Noff Magazine, and discover you’re best friends. Later, you’ll play them at Tupple, the greatest game of all time gifted to the festival by the Tech Team, and wonder how you ever went without them before.

02:00 In bed, you lie comatose, dreaming in grey. Warped scenes of your dance off with Tamara Harvey are interspersed with photocopy-related panic but there is a smile on your face along with the remains of the ill-advised Dominoes you ordered with your new BFF. In a few hours you will do it all again, but for now you collapse under the exhaustion and exhilaration of being in the wonder-bubble of creativity and camaraderie that is the National Student Drama Festival.